Press

Tammy Rae Carland, provost

Tammy Rae Carland is CCA’s chief academic officer, focused on building and supporting faculty leadership and cultivating a culture that inspires lifelong creative work. Since becoming provost in 2016, Carland has successfully expanded CCA’s faculty to better reflect the college’s diverse community of students. She oversees the curricular and programmatic enhancements afforded by CCA’s unification and San Francisco campus expansion.

In her creative practice, Carland is a photographer, video artist, zine editor, independent art gallery founder, and co-founder of Mr. Lady Records and Videos, an independent record label and video art distribution company dedicated to the production and distribution of queer and feminist culture. In the 1990s, Carland was instrumental in the launch of the feminist Riot Grrrl movement and collaborated on album art for the bands Bikini Kill, The Fakes, and The Butchies.

Helen Maria Nugent, dean of Design

Helen Maria Nugent leads CCA’s undergraduate and graduate Design programs, guided by the belief that a design education prepares students to both envision and build a better future for all. Hallmarks of Nugent’s approach include her commitment to ensuring designers are well-versed in critical thinking and equipped with the skills to craft tangible, desirable, and sustainable alternatives that address real-world problems. Since joining CCA in 2017, she has worked extensively to establish a collective vision for how the college’s expansion and new custom-built environment situated in San Francisco will support a future-focused design curriculum.

Nugent’s co-developed curriculum for a new discipline category called Design Arts for The National YoungArts Foundation integrates architectural, product, interior, graphic, and fashion design. In her practice, Nugent explores the role of sensory perception in art and design. She is also co-founder of Haelo Design, an independent, research-oriented studio whose project TacTiles, commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago, allows visitors with sight impairment to experience the museum through their fingertips.

Keith Krumwiede, dean of Architecture

Dedicated to situating the Architecture division’s curriculum and pedagogy in its immediate context, Keith Krumwiede oversees programs that allow CCA students to apply what they’ve learned to impact their environment. In the Bay Area, that means building architectural solutions to mitigate a broad range of challenges, from ecological vulnerabilities to steep socioeconomic inequalities. Since joining the college, Krumwiede has guided the launch of CCA Architecture Books, a new publishing imprint.

Krumwiede, joined CCA from the American Academy in Rome, researches the relationship between architecture and its cultural, social, and political milieus. His book Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction (Park Books, 2017) offers a critique of both American culture—reflecting upon the world we’ve made and the world we might have made—and architecture culture, lampooning its hubris and its often-complicit relationship to power and privilege. At the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, he exhibited The Monuments of Another America, a 50-foot-long scenic wallpaper based on Xavier Mader’s 1814 wallpaper, The Monuments of Paris.

About California College of the Arts

Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. Benefiting from its San Francisco Bay Area location, the college prepares students for lifelong creative work by cultivating innovation, community engagement, and social and environmental responsibility.